And the review is in…for Chris Jaffe.
The categories tracked in the database are Individual Hitting, Individual Pitching, a modified Pythagorean formula, Team Offense, and Team Pitching. The first two categories rely on algorithms to measure a player’s stats in a particular year against the surrounding seasons. For hitters, Runs Created are calculated and for pitchers, Component ERA. Those stats also factor into the Team Offense and Team Pitching results, by comparing how many runs a team should have scored or allowed, compared to what they actually did.
Jaffe also factors in managerial tendencies, breaking down each man’s preferences for bunting, stealing, using his bullpen, etc. And for skippers who worked before 1965, he measures their affinity for “leveraging” starting pitchers by scheduling them to inordinately face top or bottom teams. This strategy disappeared more than 40 years ago when most teams adopted more rigid starting rotations.
The refreshing thing about Jaffe’s approach is he acknowledges the limitations of ranking managers based solely on statistics. Earlier, purely statistical, breakdowns of team leaders have come to the conclusion that managers don’t actually have much impact on a team’s record. Jaffe rejects that. “I believe managers matter,” he writes in the first chapter. “To convince me otherwise would take more than an equation, no matter how brilliant its math.”
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1. Pasta-diving Jeter (jmac66) Posted: March 04, 2010 at 10:18 PM (#3472802)**In 1993 LaRussa's career wasn't long enough for inclusion.
If you like sabermetric-based analysis of managerial strategy, Chris wins by about the length of the course. If you like journalistic anecdotage that capture the character of managers as people, Koppett is ahead by a few feet.
If you like sabermetric-based analysis of managerial strategy, Chris wins by about the length of the course. If you like journalistic anecdotage that capture the character of managers as people, Koppett is ahead by a few feet.
Then either you're on Chris's payroll, or that must be one hell of a book**, because by the time he'd died Koppett likely had forgotten more about baseball than all but maybe half a dozen people have ever known. Koppett's main problem was that he seldom got into lists or shouting matches in order to get attention. If only he'd had Gammons' modern media exposure and Mariotti's decibel level.
**and I'm sure it's the latter
Why can't it be both?
Eh, fra paolo works cheap. That shouldn't be surprising given that his BTF-name comes from people who take a vow of poverty.
- Brock Hanke
Francis's opponents in 1961-63:
4 "Ray Sadecki"
4 "Jim O'Toole"
3 "Sandy Koufax"
2 "Stan Williams"
2 "Johnny Podres"
2 "Joey Jay"
2 "Jim Maloney"
2 "Curt Simmons"
2 "Carl Willey"
2 "Bob Hendley"
2 "Bob Bruce"
2 "Art Mahaffey"
1 "Willard Hunter"
1 "Vinegar Bend Mizell"
1 "Vern Law"
1 "Tony Cloninger"
1 "Ron Piche"
1 "Ron Perranoski"
1 "Robin Roberts"
1 "Ray Washburn"
1 "Lew Burdette"
1 "Juan Marichal"
1 "John Tsitouris"
1 "Jim Golden"
1 "Jim Duffalo"
1 "Jim Brewer"
1 "Glen Hobbie"
1 "Gaylord Perry"
1 "Don Drysdale"
1 "Dick Ellsworth"
1 "Dick Drott"
1 "Dallas Green"
1 "Chris Zachary"
1 "Cal McLish"
1 "Cal Koonce"
1 "Bob Sadowski"
1 "Bob Gibson"
1 "Billy O'Dell"
1 "Bill Smith"
Looking at Harold's list, I count 56 starts in all, but Francis started only 51 games in those years. Damned if I can explain that.
Well, you might better say that Koppett's stories were old hat to a tiny handful of true aficionados who grew up on the old Sporting News. It's not as if the collective memory of the American public (or even the typical sports fan) encompasses all that much about Connie Mack or Bill McKechnie. I've probably read about as many baseball books as anyone here, and there was plenty of material in Koppett's book that was new to me in 1993. It was also the first book on managers (other than Honig's 1977 oral history book with the same name) since the 1950's, and AFAIK it was the first comparative study of managers ever written.
Obviously that's not to say that Chris's book doesn't go well beyond Koppett, but that's to be expected, given the respective target audiences (Crown Books vs McFarland), and given the exponentially expanded database that Chris had to draw upon. Nothing I say about Koppett is meant to be a knock on Chris, and in fact I just went and bought Chris's book on Amazon.
If you don't mind, I added your thoughts to my Reader Feedback page.
Thanks again. Glad you liked it.
Purely personal preference. Paperbacks are much easier to get mangled and far harder to protect under normal use. But with a 30 cent mylar protective cover for the dust jacket it's easy to keep a hardback in new condition forever, even if you put a coffee cup on top of it.
Oh, and when most hardbacks go into paperback editions, the hardbacks are often much cheaper on Amazon, even for very clean copies. One more reason that I avoid paperbacks unless, like Chris's book, it's the only edition available.
A former customer of mine agrees with you, though. He's got over 8,000 sports books and will buy an underlined x-library paperback for $9.99 over a new hardcover for $10.00. It's the fault line between pure "information gatherers" and those who use that as a starting point, but who also want the information in the best format available. Obviously there's no right or wrong here, only aesthetic preferences.
But there is one big quasi-practical advantage for the latter group: When you croak, if your wife and / or kids don't share your baseball passion, they'll be able to get a lot more money for your collection.
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